You know who to call when you have ghosts but who do you call when you have monsters?

A group of young children are members of the Monster Squad, a club who idolise anything monster-orientated in their treehouse hideaway. When they find out that real monsters including Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster have invaded their small town, they realise that it is up to them to save the day as the adults would never believe them.

‘The Goonies with monsters’ is how most people view The Monster Squad and whilst that comparison is largely accurate, it does do this fantastic film such a disservice as there’s far more going on here than being a horror-based version of Spielberg’s kids classic. Co-written by Fred Dekker and Shane Black (considered one of the pioneer screenwriters of the action genre with the Lethal Weapon films under his belt), the smart script both pays homage to the old films and brilliantly brings them up-to-date for the then-modern era of the 1980s. This is a film which plays upon the premise that monsters, and all things horror, are the coolest things to a bunch of twelve-year old boys. They are falling in love with the genre for the first time here in their little monster club, and the audience is reminded of their first forays into the genre.

There is something quaint and innocent about this whole film that has attracted such a cult audience over the years. It wasn’t very successful upon its initial release, but time has been extremely kind to The Monster Squad over the years. I’ve never been entirely sure who the film is targeted at – I think it is meant to be a children’s film, though there is far more bad language and serious action (quite a few people die in this one) than you’d probably want to subject your own kids to. Perhaps it’s this confusion which led to both adults and children thinking it was for the other age group and deciding not to watch it. Regardless of who the film was geared towards then, it’s clear that adults have taken this to their heart, particularly those in the thirty-forty demographic who will have been young when this was doing the rounds. There is a real love and affection for the genre shown across almost every aspect of the film and it’s this endearing concept which has kept it feeling fresh.

The Monster Squad is by far from perfect and this is largely down to the plot, which is fairly loose and coincidental and harks back to the monster mash team-ups from the 40s, where the narrative was just a sketchy mess of ideas designed to throw the big monsters together. The prologue is little more than a MacGuffin to give the monsters a reason to be in suburban America, but the film assumes you don’t really care about that and just proceeds to go with the flow. The Monster Squad borders on being funny and scary from herein out. It’s funny in places, though you wish it was funnier in others. Legions of fans across the world won’t help but raise a laugh whenever they hear the “Wolfman’s got nards!” line but the film really needed more silliness like that when it matters.

Stan Winston provides the updated make-up jobs on the monsters and they all look fantastic. Frankenstein’s monster is probably the easiest one of the group to get ‘right’ and Winston opts for the classic look here. It’s the revamped versions of the Wolfman, the Creature and the Mummy which look great, particularly a brief werewolf transformation sequence that deserves more appreciation. It’s a pity that the latter two don’t get much to do in the film at all. The bulk of the monster action involves Dracula, portrayed by Duncan Regehr, and the Monster, played by Tom Noonan. Regehr’s Dracula isn’t the best incarnation of the bloodthirsty count you’re ever going to see but he manages to switch between the elegance and menace of the role well. However, it’s Noonan’s Monster who steals the show, as the lumbering brute develops a sweet relationship with a little girl. Throwbacks to the infamous scene in which the Monster stumbles across a little girl next to a lake in the original 1931 version, The Monster Squad develops the innocent bond even further here, leading to a heart-warming moment during the finale which will have even the most hardened souls reaching for the tissues.

At under eighty minutes long, The Monster Squad is one film where you actually want the production team to have rolled with it a little longer, even for another ten minutes. The film is pacey and light-hearted for the most, so you’ll be able to sit back and breeze through it. Surprisingly, the youngsters cast in the lead roles are all excellent – Andre Gower, Michael Faustino, Bobby Kiger and Brent Chalem (as ‘Fat Kid’) will not get on your nerves like the know-it-all kids from other horror films, and work together well. However, it’s little Ashley Bank who steals the show as the sweet, good-natured Phoebe who steals the Monster’s heart with their touching, though short-lived, friendship.

The Monster Squad is not perfect but it’s close. It’s rare example of a film which will have you reverting to your twelve-year old childlike state once again no matter how many times you’ve seen it. It brings back your own memories of watching horror films for the first time, whilst delivering a solid slice of 80s horror-comedy action at the same time.

A freak accident allows Dr Niemann, a follower of Dr Frankenstein, to escape from prison along with his hunchback assistant. Killing and then assuming the place of the owner of a chamber of horrors sideshow, Niemann is shocked to realise that the exhibit contains the skeleton remains of Count Dracula. Reviving Dracula to kill those who imprisoned him in the first place, Niemann then discovers the frozen bodies of the Wolfman, Larry Talbot, and the Frankenstein monster. Promising Talbot he would rid him of his curse if he helped him find Frankenstein’s notes and continue his work, it isn’t long before Niemann encounters problems with his old enemies.

House of Frankenstein was the penultimate Universal monster mash (not including the comedy romp with Abbott and Costello in 1948) and it’s clear to see that the studio was running out of steam with their respective franchises. Pitting two of them off against each other in the previous entry Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the studio beat the Marvel Cinematic Universe bandwagon by decades by acknowledging that two or more of their famous characters inhabited the same universe. The film worked well to combine the two monsters and it was a success so it was inevitable that Universal would continue the trend, adding further monsters to the mix. In doing so, they’ve watered down the formula and, far from being a battle royal of epic proportions featuring the pillars of the horror genre, House of Frankenstein turns into something of an epic mess.

The three classic monsters have all seen far better days and it’s a shame to see how shabby they are treated here. Dracula has become a stereotype of himself, all cape-wearing, wide-eyed, hypnotic and well-mannered rather than a ravenous, hissing sexual monster. The Frankenstein monster, far from the pitiful, pathetic creature of the original Frankenstein, is now just a lumbering brute who walks with his hands stretched out in front of him. The Wolf Man comes out the best but that’s purely because it’s the same actor, Lon Chaney Jr, portraying him and so there’s at least a sense of cohesion between the films. His character hasn’t shown any progression though and is still in the same self-pitying, tormented position as he was in The Wolf Man years earlier. The poor chap just can’t catch a break and desperately falls in with the dangerous Niemann who provides him with false promises.

The main problem with House of Frankenstein isn’t the portrayal of the monsters, it’s that although the film advertises the plot to feature all of the famous monsters going at each other at the same time, the reality is very different and the film is almost split into episodes dealing with the individual monsters. Dracula is first up and his standalone appearance in the first twenty minutes means that he doesn’t interact with either the Wolf Man or Frankenstein monster. The second part of the film focuses on Niemann’s efforts to deal with the Wolf Man and Frankenstein monster. The Wolf Man is the main focus here and then the monster finally comes into play in the final ten minutes or so. It’s all a very disjointed narrative and something which clearly shows the desperation to which the writers tried to crowbar every monster into the film.

At seventy minutes, the film isn’t overly long and so needs every moment that it can to give the monsters enough time to make an impression. But even with this length, the film does feel like gross padding on many occasions and the split narrative really doesn’t help. Thankfully Boris Karloff’s Niemann does anchor the film and he’s the central component to which the monsters rotate around. Karloff, returning to the series after previously portraying the monster, is in malicious form as the well-mannered but clearly insane doctor. He runs away with the film and his performance certainly adds an extra relish to proceedings.

Either of the separate stories could have filled the entire film and it wouldn’t have made much difference. What we do get with House of Frankenstein is a muddled effort where you get a little taster of each of the monsters, not enough to really spoil them too much, and end up wanting more of them. It’s brisk entertainment, not the best or worst of Universal’s horror films, but definitely one of a defining era of team-ups which would set the benchmark for Toho and Godzilla and Marvel and it’s superheroes in years to come.

Two hapless freight handlers, Wilbur and Chick, are asked to dispatch two crates to a local wax museum, allegedly containing the bodies of Dracula and the Frankenstein monster. In the midst of their bumbling behaviour, Dracula is freed and he sets about reviving the Frankenstein monster to act as his servant. In order to make the monster more docile, Dracula decides to implant another brain into it and singles out Wilbur for the host.

After Universal Studios had exhausted their iconic horror monsters by pairing them off against each other in less and lesser films like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, they looked for a new hook in which to breathe new life into their flagging fortunes. At the same time, popular comedy duo Abbott and Costello were beginning to run out of ideas and they too needed a new injection of life to keep themselves on the top of their game (being one of the biggest box office draws of their time). Someone came up with the madcap idea of pairing both Abbott and Costello and the Universal monsters off against each other and thus a legacy was born.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is quite simply fantastic comedy-horror at its most innocent and delightful. There are no pretences here. No smut. It is not desperate to make you laugh. It’s all natural, light-hearted entertainment. This is mainly down to the leading pair. Like many successful double-acts, their teaming has a simple set-up: Abbott is the straight man, Costello the buffoon. The two react to each other perfectly, retorting with slapstick, physical comedy or some zippy one-liners. One particular routine that they re-use is one in which Costello sees the monster of the piece but it disappears before Abbott comes along. Then Costello desperately tries to convince Abbott that he’s just seen something horrible but Abbott won’t believe him. It’s a good routine and one which they re-used time and time again. Add in a revolving door, Dracula and the Frankenstein monster to this skit and you’ve got one (or two since the routine is worked twice here) of the best examples of comic delivery from this era.

What is great about the film is that the script treats the monsters with respect. They are not the sources of the comedy and the butt of the jokes but are portrayed as serious characters. Rather it is the actions and reactions of Abbott and Costello which provide the laughs. The monsters follow on from their previous cinematic treatment: Dracula is manipulative and charismatic, the Wolf Man a tragic figure and the Frankenstein monster as a lumbering giant with an infant mentality. The monsters are given reasonably equal screen time so that you get a decent dose of each one.

Bela Lugosi is back as Count Dracula and I was shocked to find that this was only the second time he had played the role of the famous vampire, following on from Dracula in 1931. Dracula is the main villain of the piece, getting slightly more to do than the other monsters throughout the film as a whole but suffering a little towards the finale. The Frankenstein monster does the opposite to Dracula, starting off as a bit player but becoming the main focus in the last third. The Wolf Man, played by horror legend Lon Chaney Jr, gets little more to do than run around growling in the background most of the time when the other monsters are around. The script could quite easily have worked just as well without him (and in fact save the Wolf Man for a less-crowded sequel where he could be the main focus) but he does get his own individual moments to shine with a few transformation scenes.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was the final Universal film to feature Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolf Man for fifty six years until the release of Van Helsing. Oddly enough, despite the monsters being paired off against each other in previous films, it is in this one where the Wolf Man and Dracula physically get involved with each other.

It’s a fitting finale to this classic period of vintage horror and the overall send-off that the monsters receive in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is the perfect kind-hearted tribute to a golden era. Easily one of the greatest comedy-horrors of all time.

A salvage ship on a routine mission in space discovers a transport vessel that had been reported missing 100 years earlier. When the salvage crew boards the vessel, they discover 50 long black coffins and find out that the captain locked himself in his cabin when his crew started acting weird. Opening one of the coffins, one of the salvage crew accidentally cuts his hand, unwittingly unleashing ancient curse – that of Count Dracula.

Some of the horror ‘brands’ of the world have sent their antagonists into space in one form or another, usually when the creative teams have failed to come up with any new material for them. Pinhead did it. The Leprechaun did it. Jason Vorhees has done it. So it was a little odd to see one of the oldest horror creations going to finally take the leap into the blackness of outer space. Welcome to the stars, Count Dracula.

If there was one creation that has never needed new material it is Dracula. How many times over the years has the tale of the Count been told on film? Too many to remember but it is a winning story that has never really needed altering. So why the hell send him into space and why turn him into some weak-assed slasher when Dracula has never been about the killing, just the manner in which he does it (that whole seduction thing, using his female victims like cattle when he needs to feed, etc). Having him lurking around a spaceship (in full 19th century outfit I might add) chasing after dudes with guns isn’t what Bram Stoker had in mind when he dreamt up this fiend.

If the idea of Count Dracula turning people into vampires on a spaceship isn’t enough to make you cringe, just check a load of the cast. Casper Van Dien – his last cinematic release was Sleepy Hollow way back in 1999. Since then he’s been churning out countless TV movies like Python and Skeleton Man. Erika Eleniak – one of the hottest pieces of ass on the planet when she was in her Baywatch days but now looks like some skanky LA hooker with a breast job. Coolio – a former rapper who thinks he can act and has ‘starred’ in such genre greats as Red Water and Pterodactyl. The only person who comes out with any shred of decency is Udo Kier who doesn’t actually appear in the film with anyone else: his scenes have simply been taped in a room and played back whenever someone accesses the computer to find out what happened to the crew. It’s a Z-list cast for a Z-list movie.

There’s hardly any blood. There’s nothing scary. There’s no nudity. There’s no special effects budget (as in evidence by the explosion at the end). To say this is the year 3000, the equipment and clothing that they are using looks remarkably old. Dracula is on-screen for a total of about two minutes (kind of defeats the object of calling it Dracula 3000 doesn’t it?), opting to leave the rest of the vampire antics to a hyperactive Coolio pretending to be a vampire. The script is also full of horrible quotes like “”I want to ejaculate on your bozonkas.” I mean what the hell is that really?

I could keep going on and on but the film is one of the biggest wastes of time and effort (if there even was any in the first place) that I’m going to watch. And to top it all off, the film has the worst ending ever. I turned my head for a brief moment and then turned back to see the credits rolling. I had to rewind to make sure the film hadn’t skipped a chapter but it hadn’t!

Dracula 3000 will ruin your life if you watch it. Do not watch under any circumstances. Please for the love of all that is horror, do not watch this film!

A group of medical students find out that the barbequed dead body that they have just received is in fact a vampire. Realising the potential to use it’s blood to cure one of their own from a crippling disease, they set about trying to resurrect the monster in a remote location. However they don’t account for a priest-turned-vampire hunter who has been tracking the infamous Dracula and believes that he has found his body to destroy once and for all.

Dracula 2001 wasn’t particularly enthralling, especially after seeing something like Blade. However horror films with any medium of success in the cinemas must mean that a slew of straight-to-video sequels, which have little to no relevance to the original, will be rattled out. ‘Cashing in’ as you would call it in any other walk of life. Sometimes they’re alright but most of the time they’re just poor imitations or remakes with a lower budget. When you get gullible fools like me rushing to the shelves to rent or buy them when they get released, you’d think I have no right to complain! Anyway enough ranting because all of the ranting in the world isn’t going to make Dracula II: The Ascension any more bearable than it is.

The criminal thing that this film does is wets our appetite with a kick ass opening scene in Romania involving the bad ass (and best part of the film by a mile) Jason Scott Lee as the priest-turned-vampire hunter who dispatches two vampires with some weapons that Blade himself would be proud of. However the film suddenly shifts gears to the team of medical students and the rather dull plot of them trying to resurrect Dracula to use his blood to cure their sick comrade. The priest reappears a few times throughout the film but he’s never given enough screen time considering the explosive start he made. Talk about pulling the rug from underneath you.

Given that the film is about Dracula, it seems stupid to keep him locked up for about three quarters of the running time but that’s exactly what happens here as the Count is chained up for most of the film, only escaping towards the end to set up the inevitable sequel (which was filmed at the same time at this one and involves the same cast and crew). From a technical point of view, the film is up to scratch. It’s got a lot of style going for it, with slow motion action scenes, plenty of blood and some moody sets (the opening in Romania is great – the film should have been set here). It’s not on for too long and the film tries to keep the pace going with an odd twist and turn thrown around. But the problem is that no one cares less about it. The characters are terrible save for the priest and the plot is just an excuse to keep the cast down to minimum by setting it in some remote lab. Ideas were obviously being banded around between the writers but in the end they just ditched them all for a pointless story which goes nowhere.

As I’ve said, the best bit of the film is Jason Scott Lee. He owns the screen every time he is on but that’s maybe because there’s not a lot else to go off. The student cast just waste their times and mine with inept performances, the extremely wooden Craig Sheffer being a particular culprit. Stephen Billington takes over the role of Dracula from Gerard Butler (couldn’t see him wanting to get the fangs back on after hitting it big, can you?) but he looks like a catalogue model gone wrong with his stupid bleached blonde hair. And even Roy Scheider, with his name so visible on the front cover, is given maybe twenty seconds of screen time as a blind cardinal giving advice. Talk about an easy pay day.

Dracula II: The Ascension has some neat points but just had no clue what to do with them. The character of Father Uffizi is quality and kicks ass but he’s totally wasted in this pointless sequel which offers nothing and delivers even less.

A merchant witnesses the death of Dracula and scoops up some of his remains, his cloak and an amulet for safe keeping. Years later a trio of respectable gentlemen who are fed up of their bourgeois lifestyle decide to indulge in a bit of black arts. They meet up with Lord Courtley, one of Dracula’s disciples and together they set about resurrecting the Count. But during the ceremony the gentlemen lose their nerve and bottle it but are unaware that Count Dracula has been brought back to life anyway. Dracula sets out to get revenge on them by targeting their children.

The late 60s and early 70s was a testing time for Hammer. With 1968′s Night of the Living Dead bringing a more realistic and downright scary approach to horror, The Exorcist just around the corner and their own films becoming stagnant after hardly changing their formula since the late 50s, the studio was really struggling to find their next hit. So as they always did in times of need, they churned out another sequel to their ‘safe’ franchises of Dracula and Frankenstein.

Whereas the Frankenstein series always continued to reinvent itself with new ways for the Baron to experiment, the Dracula series simply rehashed the same old repetitive cycle of events. Dracula is resurrected. Dracula gets revenge for something. Dracula targets someone’s young female relative. Dracula is defeated. It may have worked the first few times but there were only so many times you could do the same thing with the Count before audiences began to groan. In my opinion, the series reached its peak with Dracula, Prince of Darkness – the first of the sequels to feature the Count and the one in which that whole cycle of events felt fresh. Hammer churned out Dracula Has Risen From the Grave which was more or less the same thing and then along comes Taste the Blood of Dracula, another almost like-for-like rehash.

Taste the Blood of Dracula starts off well by showing us the death of Dracula from Dracula Has Risen From the Grave from a different viewpoint and builds from there, adding some continuity to the story. We at least know that this is set in the same canonical universe as laid out in the previous film. Well, at least until it fast forwards into the future. It’s this change in time period which is the film’s saving grace. A new director in charge heralds a new direction in most film series and out went the rich and lavish Technicolour sets of Terence Fisher and Freddie Francis (of which audiences had been saturated with in the countless Hammer horror films since the late 50s) to be replaced by a more grittier, darker and realistic Victorian setting.

The newer setting works in the film’s favour as this is the first time that Hammer audiences could see Dracula roam free in his iconic Victorian locale. The dark, grim setting is a nice contrast to the sometimes fairytale-like colour of the previous films but it’s all for nothing really as there’s little atmosphere to the film. Predictability and the lack of any constant genuine threat throughout the film keep things off the boil. Dracula is hardly around, Courtley makes an early departure and the three children, converted to do Dracula’s bidding, are hampered by the actors’ inability to get into the roles. The finale is also a let down. One of the trademarks of the series had been the unique ways in which Dracula was killed off at the end of each film but here, instead of a roaring or melting demise, his death turns into somewhat of a damp squib.

Like the majority of the sequels, Taste the Blood of Dracula simply doesn’t know what to do with its title character and this is its main weakness. It’s all well and good spending time building up to his resurrection and these scenes are generally the highlights of the Dracula films. But once the Count is back, the script doesn’t know what to do with him barring the usual stuff. In fact the Count has little control over most of the events in this film and he’s almost a bystander. Christopher Lee had long been sick of playing the character by this point but continued to appear and get top billing, almost sleep walking through the film. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to be in it at all and the script originally centred around Ralph Bates’ shadowy Lord Courtley character (Bates making his Hammer debut here).

So it’s no surprise to find out that Dracula gets little screen time as he let’s his minions do most of his dirty work. The revenge motif isn’t new to the series but here, Dracula’s revenge is not so much of the neck-biting and blood-drinking kind. The vampiric elements hardly get a look in as Dracula simply corrupts children to do his dirty work – children who were already on the brink of corruption thanks to the indulgent and hypocritical lifestyles of their fathers. It’s ironic that he decides to take revenge for his disciple’s death since he didn’t know him at all and his death was necessary for Dracula to be resurrected in the first place but this is just petty nitpicking. The supporting cast do better including Geoffrey Keen (whom most people would recognise as the Minister of Defence from many of the James Bond films) and Peter Sallis, who is more famously known for his vocal work as Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit claymation films.

Taste the Blood of Dracula tries to give the Count some new life by bringing him ‘home’ into the Victorian era but apart from that, it ticks all of the usual Dracula boxes and this is where its problem lies. It’s not the worst of the series, just one of the most routine. Dracula is more like a passenger in his own film and whilst I can understand the reasoning behind it, it doesn’t work well with the title!

After being caught in bed with the burgomaster’s daughter, Paul Carlson jumps into a nearby coach and makes a hasty escape. He winds up at Castle Dracula where he becomes Dracula’s latest victim. His brother, Simon, and girlfriend find out that he’s missing and set about trying to track down his last whereabouts. This leads to an eventual confrontation with Dracula.

Yeah, it’s pretty thin on the ground for story but I guess it beats Dracula setting out for revenge again. The sixth of the Hammer Dracula films, Scars of Dracula is often heralded as the ‘point of no return’ for the series in which the films got really bad after this. That’s being a bit harsh on The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a hugely enjoyable kung-fu horror romp not to be taken too seriously. But the next two sequels, in which the story was transported into the then-current time period, are shambolic.

However in my opinion, the series really lost its way after Dracula, Prince of Darkness and the following sequels simply rehashed the same sort of story with lesser results and ever-diminishing budgets. This is clear with Scars of Dracula, a film in which its lack of budget works to destroy any sort of suspense or dread better than any shocking script could do. I bleated in my reviews for the previous couple of sequels that the first half of them were all about building up to a pivotal resurrection scene halfway through when Dracula would burst back onto the screen. Then the last half of the film would involve characters trying to kill him again. But you won’t get that here, at least with the resurrection bit.

Dracula is revived within the first few minutes here and there’s no point in trying to make any sense of it as it involves a cheap bat-on-a-string and a few drops of blood. Like Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees many years later, it’s best not to try and think about the ridiculousness of the situation and just focus on the fact that the main villain is alive and kicking again. Compared to the amazing resurrection sequence in Dracula, Prince of Darkness, this one looks downright feeble. So with Dracula all ready to within the opening act, the stage is set for us to finally see more Christopher Lee. He gets more screen time here than the previous few sequels combined and is a lot more like the character he was portrayed as in the original – coming off as a well-mannered distinguished gentleman when he needs to and then turning into a snarling, ravenous beast when he gets the urge. The irony now is that we perhaps see too much of him and any sense of mystery or aurora of the supernatural just evaporates. The more you see of him, the less you think of him as Dracula, the ultimate vampire, and the more you just see him as a run-of-the-mill bloodsucker.

Scars of Dracula is probably the bloodiest of all of the Dracula films and the gore quota has been upped dramatically. Like any horror series, you know the creativity is decline when there’s more blood on show and this is evident here. Dracula doesn’t care how he gets the blood from his victims this time around, even going so far as to stab a woman in the stomach just to be able to drink her blood. A massacre inside a church and a torture scene makes this one of Hammer’s most violent and graphic films. But when everything else is as routine as it is, the only thing you could really change is the amount of blood.

Like the majority of their output, there’s no such thing as a ‘bad’ Hammer horror film. It does its job adequately in almost every department. It’s just that the series had never really tried to do anything new (until the next couple of sequels) so the vampiric shenanigans all seems forced. There’s decent support from the likes of Patrick Troughton, Hammer regular Michael Ripper and the attractive Jenny Hanley but they can only inject so much energy into proceedings before they are engulfed by the film’s stagnant appearance. The script could really have done with a Van Helsing type character because without the famous vampire hunter, Dracula always seemed to be one step higher on the food chain than the rest of the characters (until he was killed at the end of each film however!)

Scars of Dracula is the weakest of the period Dracula films. It is derivative of its predecessors, fails to inject any new life into the tired story and simply goes through the motions very awkwardly. It’s not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just perfectly demonstrative of Hammer’s later output when they tried and failed to keep interest in their big franchises.

In London in the 1970s, Scotland Yard think they have uncovered a case of vampirism and head off to seek the expert advice of Professor Larimer Van Helsing. Investigating further, Van Helsing discovers that some extremely rich and powerful figures are ploughing money into a huge foundation with a boss who has never been seen. It turns out that this boss is in fact the resurrected Count Dracula who is finally sick of the endless pain and suffering of eternal life and is plotting to unleash a new enhanced strain of the Black Death thus taking everyone in the world down with him when he dies.

Talk about flogging a dead horse. There’s no wonder Christopher Lee got sick of donning the fangs whenever Hammer came calling! This penultimate Dracula film is slightly better than the abysmal Dracula A.D. 1972 but still suffers from placing the film in a contemporary setting, instead of the traditional period settings which Hammer were exceptional at recreating. However The Satanic Rites of Dracula has always been given a lot of bad press and a lot of it is undeserved. Hammer clearly didn’t know what to do with Dracula anymore and so this ends up a random mix of traditional elements from Hammer, the newly popular Devil/occult themed films (The Exorcist) and bizarrely enough, the James Bond films.

The plot, whilst it may not be keeping with the historical legacy of Count Dracula, is still chillingly believable as Dracula wants to end his life and take everyone down with him as the ultimate act of revenge. However we see so little of the Count during the majority of the film that one could be forgiven for thinking it was Dr No or someone trying to take down the world. Speaking of Bond, this film does seem to smell a little of being a spy caper. There’s plenty of espionage, underhand dealings, sinister headquarters, secret agents, conspiracies and of course, the plot to take down the world. It seems as though Hammer was throwing caution to the wind and trying to contemporise Dracula a little too much. Like the similarly-themed Fu Manchu films, the horror aspect is thrown away for most of the film and it turns into some low-brow action/spy flick. It’s so obvious that the writers were struggling to find worthwhile things for Dracula to do – having him running a massive corporation isn’t exactly what Bram Stoker would have thought his character would be doing.

Thankfully Christopher Lee is back as Dracula and Peter Cushing is back as Van Helsing so at least Lee’s last appearance in the series ends on a pretty respectable note with the two titans battling each other one final time. Even if the script fails them, these two icons are always worth their pay cheque and this is no exception. Dracula’s demise is a little weak though and I would liked to have seen Van Helsing finally hammer home a massive stake through his heart to end the personal vendetta between the two. Comparing the final showdowns in the previous films where Dracula is turned to dust or drowned, this one ends on a little whimper.

Apart from the Dracula-fighting, the older Van Helsing seems a little out of place in the ‘action man’ environment and most of the hero stuff is left to one of the younger supporting investigators. Again the old guard and the new breed are brought together with mixed results and I would have preferred the action elements to be left alone so that Van Helsing could stake some more vampires in grisly old school fashion. After this, Christopher Lee said he was done with Dracula and hung up his cape. Cushing would stay on for one more vampire flick, the quite enjoyable The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires which dealt with Dracula but only fleetingly at the beginning.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula isn’t a bad way for Christopher Lee to bow out as Dracula, especially compared to the previous instalment and the plot is interesting in theory. But when you look back to some of the highlights of the series including Horror of Dracula and Dracula, Prince of Darkness, you can see how much they were milking this series, and milking it badly too. It’s fallen a long way since 1958.

A young teacher on her way to a new job in Transylvania gets stranded at an old castle. There she is persuaded by a young man to help him escape the shackles with which his mother has kept him locked up in for years. Unknown to her, the man is actually a vampire and a disciple of Count Dracula. Finally freed, he begins to unleash his reign of terror on the local village. That is until Dr Van Helsing shows up to put an end to the vampire plague once and for all.

When Christopher Lee stated that he wasn’t going to reprise his role as Dracula, Hammer had two options. Either recast the role which could alienate a lot of people and they had to be sure they got the right man in the first place. Or the alternative was to switch the focus of this franchise from Count Dracula to Van Helsing and base the films around him and his vampire hunting. Let’s face it: Dracula was hardly in Horror of Dracula so this decision was a smart move on the part of Hammer. Having said that, the title is extremely misleading and a little shameless too, designed as a cynical marketing ploy and no more. Dracula does not make an appearance at all here so one must wonder just whose brides these are! Although calling the film The Brides of Dracula’s Disciple just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

The Brides of Dracula is well structured and although it does take time to get its wheels turning, it gets there in the end. We’re introduced to the lovely Yvonne Monlaur, obviously cast for her European beauty rather than her acting skills and there are plenty of plot twists which actually set about the releasing of the vampire. These are all reasonably executed so that you’re never at the point where you wonder if everything in the film is going to be a coincidence. It might be a little sluggish for some but it’s never boring and perhaps the only reason the film drags in these early stages is that you’re reminded of how much you’re missing Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing tearing it up on screen.

Fear not because the film kick starts itself once Van Helsing turns up and Brides of Dracula suddenly turns into one of the more memorable entries into the entire series. He doesn’t appear until the half-way stage so not only does the film rob the fans of Dracula but their new main star, Van Helsing, has to take a back seat in his first solo outing. You’ll feel a little duped for a while but there are enough tricks up this film’s sleeve to make you forget that. It has many stand-out scenes including but not limited to one of Dracula’s victims rising from her grave, a scene in which Van Helsing is bitten and takes drastic action to stop himself from becoming a vampire and, of course, a wonderful finale inside an old mill in which Van Helsing tries to end the vampire menace by using the sails of the windmill to create a huge shadow of a cross to dominate the landscape. You’d be hard pressed to find as many entertaining set pieces as this in the later instalments.

Atmospherically the film is top notch, with misty forests, dark and eerie castles and humble Transylvanian villages all providing some exquisite sets in which the actors can strut their stuff. Terence Fisher could have produced his most visually-impressive Hammer film here with everything erupting in glorious Technicolor. It has dated in some respects but in others, it’s beautifully shot and captures the Hammer period vibe down to a tee. It’s the perfect set-up for Peter Cushing to come in and do what he does best – command the screen with his screen presence. He carries this film and because he doesn’t turn up till half-way through, that is a heavy burden to shoulder. He is, in my opinion, the greatest genre actor to have ever lived and you can do worse than watch this film to see why. Watch his gentle, courteous and esteemed character suddenly turn into a brutal, cold-hearted man on a mission to destroy vampires when confronted with danger.

It’s a pity that he’s not up against someone a little stronger because you get the sense that Cushing underplays his role, for fearing of overshadowing his on-screen nemesis. David Peel is just too weak and bland and doesn’t have any menace or presence about him whatsoever, thus making the vampire threat somewhat of a damp squib. It’s a good job they didn’t recast Dracula because this guy would have ruined the part. As a minion of the Count, he’s passable. In this respect, Brides of Dracula shares the same fate as many other non-Dracula Hammer vampire films in that they just couldn’t top Dracula as the main villain. Once you’ve had the Prince of Darkness as your villain, everyone else seems second best. As with many Hammer films, it’s always the bit roles which provide the most entertainment – Miles Malleson almost stealing the show as a drunken doctor. The actual ‘brides’ of the title don’t get much to do except for parade around scantily-clad.

Coming directly after the genre-defining precedents that Horror of Dracula set was going to be no easy feat and thankfully The Brides of Dracula does it’s best to live up to standards. It takes it’s time to get going and has a weak villain (I can just imagine what Lee would have added to the film with his presence) but the final third is as exciting and entertaining as anything Hammer has ever done.

Posing as a librarian, vampire hunter Jonathan Harker travels to Castle Dracula where he intends to kill Dracula and end his vampiric legacy. But the sun sets before he can do it and Dracula manages to bite him. Wanting revenge for his attempted assassination, Dracula preys upon Lucy, Harker’s fiancé. When they find Harker’s book and diary, Dr Van Helsing teams up with her brother, Arthur, to try and put an end to Dracula before she fully turns.

The ball had started rolling for Hammer’s glorious Technicolour reinvention of horror cinema a year earlier with The Curse of Frankenstein but it was Dracula which cemented the legacy of the studio and marked the beginning of their dominance over the horror genre for the next two decades. There was a reason that the Universal films had died out in the 40s and that was because audiences had grown tired of seeing Bela Lugosi prance around in a daft cape and turn into a bat-on-a-string. So it was a risky move for Hammer to test the waters and see if audiences were ready for a new breed of Dracula. Brought into the then-modern era with lavish and exotic colour to give realism to everything, Dracula marks a far cry from the black and white days of old. This was Dracula like audiences had never seen before and it changed the face of horror cinema forever.

Dracula is a groundbreaking film not just for screen vampires but for horror in general. Taboo subjects back in the day were thrust into the spotlight with graphic violence and sexual undertones, once only suggested in the original Dracula films, now receiving centre stage. It may look tame nowadays but back in 1958 this was shocking material. The link between vampirism and eroticism is common nature in cinema now. Quite frankly it would be virtually impossible to separate the two and they have become bound by time. Say vampire to anyone and they would conjure up the exact images that this film presents – that of the tall, dark and handsome vampire who seduces young women and then drinks their blood. This is the film which gave birth to this vision. The previous Universal Dracula never even skirted the issues. This one confronts them head on.

Christopher Lee smashed preconceptions of how Dracula was to be portrayed. Instead of Bela Lugosi’s hammy Count with his high collars and greased back hair, Lee’s Dracula is ripped right from the book. One moment he is a perfect gentleman with manners and courtesy, the next moment he is transformed into an almost-rabid monster, displays raw, animalistic instincts like never before. He possesses a more sexual, sinister element and this erotic tone, skirted over in the Lugosi Dracula films, is now brought to the fore. Dracula is now predator-like, stalking his sweet and innocent virginal victims before turning them into wild, aggressive vampires with the same sexual desires and needs as he.

The shock value has greatly diminished over the years as this has become the norm for vampires. But back in 1958, this was something shocking to behold. Female characters sit waiting for Dracula with plunging night gowns which do little more than cover over anything that would have led to the film being banned. Lee’s physical attributes are key to the character’s success. Tall, imposing and handsome, Lee looks everything like a dashing nobleman. It’s funny to note that he has little screen time and few lines but such is the impression his character makes, you would think he was present in every scene. It’s a mesmerizing performance and there’s little wonder that Lee’s portrayal (in this one at least) is consistently labelled as the best Dracula to have ever hit the big screen. There can be little argument with that.

Let’s not forget Peter Cushing. His Van Helsing brings all of Cushing’s calm, intelligence and wit to the role and is the perfect foil to Lee’s Dracula. With Lee not having much to say, a lot of the impact of the film and the events that unfold is down to Cushing and his performance. He balances religion and science, bringing credibility to the vampire threat and enhancing the role of Dracula as a bringer of death and destruction. In many of the portrayals since this, Van Helsing is seen as somewhat of a lesser adversary to Dracula but not here. Van Helsing is on a equal playing field and the two are well matched. One only needs to watch the gripping finale as Van Helsing and Dracula tussle through the castle, culminating in a memorable finale as Van Helsing pulls out all of the tricks in his book to try and kill Dracula once and for all. It’s a finale which none of the following sequels even came close to beating.

As well as the two legendary main stars, the main men behind-the-scenes from The Curse of Frankenstein were all back on board to try and do the same with Dracula. Director Terence Fisher, writer Jimmy Sangster and composer James Bernard all contribute some of their best work here. Fisher’s direction is assured, pacing the film well and keeping the cast on their toes for the majority of the running time with little lull in proceedings. He knows what he wants from the screen and proceeds to ring every ounce of detail from the sets. This is gothic but like audiences had never seen before – brought to life in vivid colour almost fairytale-like. The entrance of Dracula, silhouetted at the top of a staircase, is fantastic horror imagery.

Credit must also be given to cinematographer Jack Asher who brings to life the sets and embraces the novel use of colour – Dracula’s fangs have never dripped blood as crimson and as pure as they do here. Sangster’s script is economical and manages to streamline Bram Stoker’s book, admittedly not being a very faithful adaptation and taking a few liberties with plot elements. James Bernard produces another of his fine scores here with the signature theme for Dracula being one of his most famous pieces.

Dracula is a landmark Hammer film, more importantly so than The Curse of Frankenstein because of the increased focus on sexuality in horror. What we know as the norm was risqué material in 1958 and it’s thanks to the likes of Dracula that the genre we know today is what it is. It’s possibly the best teaming of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in two of their most iconic roles and is, quite frankly, one of my country’s finest horror films. Scratch that, it’s one of the genre’s finest horror films too.